Exodus 12:14-15

12:14 This day will become ¹  a memorial ²  for you, and you will celebrate it as a festival ³  to the Lord – you will celebrate it perpetually as a lasting ordinance. ⁴  12:15 For seven days ⁵  you must eat ⁶  bread made without yeast. ⁷  Surely ⁸  on the first day you must put away yeast from your houses because anyone who eats bread made with yeast ⁹  from the first day to the seventh day will be cut off ¹⁰  from Israel.

Exodus 12:18-20

12:18 In the first month, ¹¹  from the fourteenth day of the month, in the evening, you will eat bread made without yeast until the twenty-first day of the month in the evening. 12:19 For seven days ¹²  yeast must not be found in your houses, for whoever eats what is made with yeast – that person ¹³  will be cut off from the community of Israel, whether a foreigner ¹⁴  or one born in the land. 12:20 You will not eat anything made with yeast; in all the places where you live you must eat bread made without yeast.’”

¹ tn Heb “and this day will be.”

² tn The expression “will be for a memorial” means “will become a memorial.”

³ tn The verb וְחַגֹּתֶם (vÿkhaggotem), a perfect tense with the vav (ו) consecutive to continue the instruction, is followed by the cognate accusative חַג (khag), for emphasis. As the wording implies and the later legislation required, this would involve a pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Yahweh.

⁴ tn Two expressions show that this celebration was to be kept perpetually: the line has “for your generations, [as] a statute forever.” “Generations” means successive generations (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 94). עוֹלָם (’olam) means “ever, forever, perpetual” – no end in sight.

⁵ tn This expression is an adverbial accusative of time. The feast was to last from the 15th to the 21st of the month.

⁶ tn Or “you will eat.” The statement stresses their obligation – they must eat unleavened bread and avoid all leaven.

⁷ tn The etymology of מַצּוֹת (matsot, “unleavened bread,” i.e., “bread made without yeast”) is uncertain. Suggested connections to known verbs include “to squeeze, press,” “to depart, go out,” “to ransom,” or to an Egyptian word “food, cake, evening meal.” For a more detailed study of “unleavened bread” and related matters such as “yeast” or “leaven,” see A. P. Ross, NIDOTTE 4:448-53.

⁸ tn The particle serves to emphasize, not restrict here (B. S. Childs, Exodus [OTL], 183, n. 15).

⁹ tn Heb “every eater of leavened bread.” The participial phrase stands at the beginning of the clause as a casus pendens, that is, it stands grammatically separate from the sentence. It names a condition, the contingent occurrences of which involve a further consequence (GKC 361 §116.w).

¹⁰ tn The verb וְנִכְרְתָה (vÿnikhrÿtah) is the Niphal perfect with the vav (ו) consecutive; it is a common formula in the Law for divine punishment. Here, in sequence to the idea that someone might eat bread made with yeast, the result would be that “that soul [the verb is feminine] will be cut off.” The verb is the equivalent of the imperfect tense due to the consecutive; a translation with a nuance of the imperfect of possibility (“may be cut off”) fits better perhaps than a specific future. There is the real danger of being cut off, for while the punishment might include excommunication from the community, the greater danger was in the possibility of divine intervention to root out the evildoer (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 94). Gesenius lists this as the use of a perfect with a vav consecutive after a participle (a casus pendens) to introduce the apodosis (GKC 337 §112.mm).

¹¹ tn “month” has been supplied.

¹² tn “Seven days” is an adverbial accusative of time (see R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 12, §56).

¹³ tn The term is נֶפֶשׁ (nefesh), often translated “soul.” It refers to the whole person, the soul within the body. The noun is feminine, agreeing with the feminine verb “be cut off.”

¹⁴ tn Or “alien”; or “stranger.”